That Naked Dream

I've never had that often talked about dream of walking thru a school hallway or office department in my birthday suit. I know that movies/sit-coms sometimes make reference to it. But I don't think that sort of dream would bother me, or would be something that I would remember enough to discuss with anyone.

Last night I did however have a pretty terrifying dream. In the dream, I was in a hospital with a few colleagues and what appeared to be the chief of medicine. He was taking me and my colleagues on grand rounds. Each patient he showed us had a unique disease and he was telling us about standard diagnosis techniques and also first line medication. We came to a patient that had a certain malady and the attending turned to me and said, "how would you proceed doctor?". I immdediately froze. All eyes were upon me, all waiting for my knowledge. My armpits started to sweat--I'm never buying Speed Stick again. My throat closed up and in my dream the room went black.

I actually woke up with a light layer of sweat on my entire body. And I was breathing somewhat harder than I usually do. I think for me, this was my naked dream. It was a moment in time when I felt completely nude/vunerable.

When I was a fourth year medical student, a resident asked me to come with him on rounds with a certain "terror" attending. He said that maybe the guy wouldn't be so horrible in front of a medical student. He gave me some charts to look over and said that the physician would be arriving in about 30 minutes. I looked over the charts to familiarize myself with each patient--so I wouldn't be lost during the rounds or the possible barrage of questions that would follow.

The first few patients we attended to were not that bad. Maybe having a medical student come along was the trick--to pacify Doc Terror. Then we got to one of the last patients. Doc Terror asked the resident--"what is the clinical name for this disease". Simple enough. The resident thought for a moment, his eyes rolled upward as if a magic cheatsheet would appear on the ceiling. He said "I'm not sure". Doc Terror said, "what is a pathognomonic sign or symptom that would lead you to clinically diagnose this patient". I believe because of stumbling the first time, the resident became more flustered and unable to catch his balance completely fell. He opened the chart, he looked at the patient for any visible physical signs that he could blurt out.

A little frustrated, Dr. Terror then turned his fangs on me. He said, "what is the clinical name for this"? I told him rubeola. His voice became a little less gruff when he asked, "what signs or symptoms would the patient have". I told him koplik spots. He then turned to the resident and said something somewhat rude and left us with the patient. The resident turned to me and said "I don't know what happened to me".

I knew what happened. It is this complete vunerability that you feel when still in a learning process. The disease was simple and I knew he knew those answers. He was brilliant--I knew he was. He was constantly teaching me about laboratory findings, the way to proceed with each physical exam, and also new drugs. Other medical students turned to him with questions. I guess at that particular moment in time he was just living the "naked dream".